Ansible 12 compatibility (implicit boolean conversion)

[mherold]

This PR fixes compatibility issues with Ansible 12 by updating conditional statements to use proper boolean evaluation. It fixes "Conditionals must have a boolean result" error.

Changes:

• Updated conditionals from when: var | d() to when: (var | d("")) | is truthy for string variables

See https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/porting_guides/porting_guide_12.html#example-implicit-boolean-conversion

[nickjj]

Thanks a lot for this, I haven't upgraded to that version of Ansible yet.

Most of the changes are things like this (item.name | d() | length > 0).

What happens when d() is evaluated to None when the item doesn't exist? Will the call to length throw an exception?

I don't have a system to test this on.

If it's a problem, maybe we should be explicit and use d("") to say we want an empty string?

[nickjj]

Another thing to consider is the docs mention | length > 0 or | is truthy as being both valid solutions.

If both work, there is a readability consideration here.

The docs themselves use length > 0 in the examples. Personally I find this easier to mentally parse because then I don't need to think about what is truthy or not because I know a non-empty string is True.

With that said, we are dealing with a when condition and tying in the idea of is truthy is quite readable in this context because then it basically says "when this thing is true".

I'm just writing this out so it's documented. I'm not sure which option to pick yet. Do you have any considerations?

[mherold]

@nickjj Thanks for the quick response + suggestions!

1. Although I just tested that d() does work, I changed it to d("") ... I think it's good to be explicit here.
2. I added a separate commit replacing the length test with is truthy. You can use it to compare ;-) It's shorter, and I personally like it a bit better reading it. If you agree, I can squash the two commits accordingly - or remove it otherwise.

WDYT?

[nickjj]

Thanks.

Let me think about it for a day or 2, but we'll merge one of them!

[nickjj]

Looks good, do you want to roll this up to 1 commit? We can go with the is truthy version.

[mherold]

All rolled up.

[nickjj]

Thanks a lot for this!

I just released v2.5.2 which has this available.